I don’t think any ideological thought ever went into “pro-life”, it’s never been more than a feel good marketing slogan to avoid being “anti-”. I don’t really think it’s a productive game to play “gotcha!” with the term because they don’t think of the slogan as literal, it’s a phrase incorporated into a whole worldview, only within which it does actually make logical sense.
I have a problem with denying anyone their own mind. Whatever the circumstances are or were, the women involved should be the last word in what they thought. Calling them brainwashed just because they changed their minds is condescending and insulting.
Whether it’s logically consistent (and thus not hypocritical) is a different question from whether or not it’s crazy. It can be perfectly consistent and crazy at the same time.
I read “The Handmaid’s Tale” in college, and it informed me. It still informs me now.
The Nopes have suddenly stepped into power inexplicably, and it’s time to send them their projections: nopes.
You will not subjugate women to subjugation via abortion law; I will not allow it; so let it be written, so let it be done; oh, it was? Then it stands. Word.
I was born into a Catholic home in the early 70s. Went to a Catholic grammar school run by nuns, then to Catholic high school run by Franciscan brothers, then to a Jesuit university. By the time I was 12 or so, I no longer bought into the whole God thing – after that I was just trying to find something that would make me believe like my classmates. I never found it. But … the whole pro-life stance was such a big deal it’s hard to describe. It was just kinda assumed that as a Catholic we’d be against abortion. We were encouraged to protest, march, etc. and it was likened to killing a newborn baby just before it became one. I am firmly pro-choice but it did not come easy to me after all those years. Really for me it was the last holdout.
Here’s my stake: if you want so desperately to protect life, then you must do it across the spectrum: no capital punishment, no war, no collateral damage. Can you subscribe to that? Will you house, love, and educate the unwanted as they deserve to be loved, housed, and educated?
If so, then I’m pro-life, but if you vacillate anywhere on that triad, you are lost, imo.
I get where you’re coming from. I don’t like the idea of abortion, but feel that it should be available as an option regardless of my own feelings on it, because eliminating it as an option would do more harm than good.
I actually lean toward this belief. I was a complete pacifist and vegetarian as well. It was hard to keep up with without feeling like a hypocrite. The pacifists have good points, but adhering to that philosophy absolutely with no exceptions has not been healthy or realistic for me.
Yes, certainly this is true. But for millennia, making sure women were constantly bearing & caring for children has been one of the main systems for controlling our behaviour and options. It’s built into the system as a foundational tool in a way that forced non-childbearing doesn’t seem to be, at least to my knowledge of history.
Yes, I’m not denying that. But the point is to ensure the ability to make that choice for ourselves, either way. Patriarchal control rested on not just control of childbearing, but on alternatives to that. Do you think that nuns or women who couldn’t conceive children or women who were before or past childbearing age were somehow magically exempt from patriarchal control? While childbearing was certainly central to it, the crux of the matter was control of almost every aspect of a woman’s life and there being no legal, social, or economic alternative to that.
In the current era, some of this is women fighting over the definition of what a “real” woman is. Some women sneer at women who stay home and raise children and some women who have children sneer at working women - it’s all bullshit posturing if you ask me and does nothing to help us create a more egalitarian society. Having children or not having children should not define a woman. Period.
I was origially thinking that forcing women to have babies to control them was far more common than forcing them not to, since I could think of only a few examples of the latter.
But then, as if on cue, my news feed handed me this:
Probably my own experience as an escaped Mormon skewed my experience here, since I was never encouraged NOT to have many, many babies when I grew up.
Yes… that’s a good point. One of the (many) dark sides of the Eugenics movements was that only the “right” people should have children. African American working class women were often the victims of sterilization campaigns (and some poor white and immigrant women):
And:
I can imagine… Mormons tend to be very pro-natal, in general and family tends to be of central import, from what I understand. So are Catholics and some protestant religious groups (the Quiverful movement, etc).
Yeah, it’s a sad history on both sides of birth/no birth compulsion for sure. My husband was active with the American Indian Movement in the 70’s and knew Native women who were forcibly sterilized, it’s an appalling bit of history more recent than many realize.
The ironic thing is that, if voluntary, free birth control for low-income women might be welcomed by many of those women, but would be fought tooth and nail by just the same kinds of conservatives that push the forced version. Which I guess really proves your point that it’s all about the choice.
Mormons are very pro-natal, good term! As a girl, every aspect of my young life was geared towards that being my ultimate purpose on earth. I remember being just crushed that I was so bad at cake decorating and that, according to the teacher and the other girls, I would never find a husband and fulfill God’s plan for me.
Despite that, the pro-family aspect of the church is hypnotic- visiting still-Mormon relatives, I am moved by the real adoration that they have for their huge families of sweet children. Until I realize that somewhere in that group of kids is likely some little girl or boy that won’t grow up to fit the mold, and much of that adoration will vanish.
Hey Sister ixcheldelgato, I was raised Mormon as well. I still remember feeling deeply sick to my stomach in a young women’s meeting upon being informed that my only purpose was to be a vessel for new spirits to make their way to earth. I think there is also something to be said for the flipside of the pro family doctrine, and what it means for women who can’t have children or who leave a marriage and cannot be sealed to another man.
Horrifying, how much the genocide/ethnic cleansing of native peoples are in many ways still ongoing. There was also the issue, starting way back in the 19th century, of taking Native children and sending them away to live in schools where they are forcibly Christianized and given to white families to be raised. Apparently, a form of this continues to today. Horrible, horrible, stomach churning stuff. This sort of thing happened in Australia as well.
Indeed. There is the problem, right there. I do think that family is important and having a big, supportive, tightknit family can be a wonderful thing. But if that family doesn’t love and accept difference, then a lot of non-conforming individuals get hurt.
You make really good points here that remind me of my cousin. She was pregnant at 17 or so, not married, and the family consensus was that she was the vessel for the soul that was meant for my aunt, who was infertile.
Cousin ended up having an abortion (she was not Mormon), and was hated for it by many of the family. It was just unquestioned truth that her role was to have that baby and give it to her step-mom, and no one understood why she wouldn’t just go along with that plan.
My aunt was judged by the other women for not being fertile enough to “keep her covenant” in her marriage, and I know she was desperate to make the whole plan happen to redeem her worth. So much sadness on both sides of that story.
For my part, it wasn’t until a couple of years later that I read the Handmaid’s Tale and realized how fucked up that whole situation had been. I left the church not long after that.
